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8/9/2019 Wharton CareerMgt1
1/21
THE WORK/LIFE BALANCE
VOL. 1
http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
WHARTONON
Managing Your Career
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Whether its deciding which parent continues to work after a child is born,
figuring out the jigsaw puzzle of job demands and out-of-work commitments,or simply finding time to take a vacation, work/life balance is a critical equation
that all employees need to solve. While these issues have been given increasing
visibility in recent years, causing workers to literally redefine what success
can mean, pressure on the work end has not subsidedand in many cases its
increasing. The following articles from Knowledge@Wharton look at the clash
between home and work life and what it takes to keep people plugged into their
jobs while feeling personally fulfilled.
The Work/Life Balance
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Plateauing: Redefining Success at Work 4
Employees are starting to set career paths based on their own needs, values, and definitions of success.They are otherwise talented and energetic workers who are plateauingsetting boundaries around their
ambitions rather than striving to climb the next step up the corporate ladder. Some companies are beginning
to take notice, providing new options and opportunities in the ongoing war for talent.
Reluctant Vacationers: Why Americans Work More, Relax Less Than Europeans 10
Workers in much of Western Europe can afford to check out for a month in August because they receive an
average of nearly 2 months a year in paid leave, a combination of vacation and government holidays. That
distinguishes them from citizens of the United States, who, despite a similarly productive economy and a
comparable standard of living, enjoy about half as much paid time off. Why are Americans reluctant, or unable,
to extricate themselves from their jobs and sign up for some serious vacation time?
Women Who Step Out of the Corporate World Find It Hard To Step Back In 13
Women executives who leave the corporate world when they hit a glass ceiling, want to raise a family full-
time, or decide to focus on other interests, encounter frustrating roadblocks in their attempts to re-enter
the workforce, according to new Wharton research. To overcome the obstacles, women should confront
the difficulties they face and prepare for their return to the labor force the moment they leave, says Monica
McGrath, adjunct professor of management at Wharton.
Work and Family: Is Peaceful Co-existence Possible? 16
In their book, Work and FamilyAllies or Enemies? What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life
Choices, authors Stewart D. Friedman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus set out to study the experience of
860 business professionals, as recorded in extensive questionnaires describing the hectic lives of the
interviewees. Conventional wisdom, our reviewer notes, will be upset by some of the findings contained in
this well-researched and serious approach to a much-dissected subject.
More Than Job Demands or Personality, Lack of Organizational Respect 18
Fuels Employee Burnout
One of the biggest complaints employees have, according to Wharton Management Professor Sigal Barsade,
is that they are not sufficiently recognized by their organizations for the work they do. Barsade and doctoral
student Lakshmi Ramarajan look at the role of respect in a paper entitled What Makes the Job Tough? The
Influence of Organizational Respect on Burnout in Human Services.
Contents
007UniversityofPennsylvania WhartonExecutiveEducation Knowledge@Wharton
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As An executive coAch who works with
corporations, Monica McGrath has her ear
to the ground. And what she is hearing is
this: A number of men and women in middle
management are increasingly reluctant to take
the next step in their careers because the
corporate ladder is not as appealing as it used
to be, and the price to climb it is too high.
These people are still ambitious, and they
are still dr iving. They just arent driving for the
same things they were driving for 15 years
ago, she says.
What may be happening, suggest McGrath and
others, is that people are setting career pathsbased on their own values and definitions of
success. They are not burned out or dropping
out; they are not going back to school and
changing careers; they are not having a mid-life
crisis. Instead, they are redefining how they
can keep contributing to their organizations,
but on their own terms. Rather than subscribe
to the onward and upward motto, they are
more interested in plateauing, unhooking
from the pressure to follow an upward path that
someone else has set.
A number of oft-cited trends in the workplace
contribute to this phenomenon: Technological
advancements are breaking down the barriers
between work and nonwork hours, adding to
the pressure to constantly be on the job or
on call. Strategic decisions like restructuring,
downsizing, and outsourcing are adding to
job uncertainty at all levels and reducing the
number of promotions available to mid- and
upper-level managers. The continuing influx
of women into the workforce keeps raising
the level of stress when it comes to work/life
balance issues.
Lois Backon, a vice president at Families and
Work Institute (FWI), a New York-based nonprofit
research organization, points to a report FWI
does every 5 years entitled National Study of
the Changing Work Force. The latest one was
released in 2003. One of their areas of research
relates to what the organization calls reduced
aspirations among various sectors of the
workforce. This is an incredibly important issue,
and it offers some of the most troubling data out
there for corporate America, she notes.
For example, in one of its latest reports,
Generation & Gender (2004), which uses
data from the national study to determine
differences among generations, FWI found that
fewer employees aspired to positions of greater
responsibility than in the past. Among college-
educated men of Gen-Y, Gen-X, and boomer ages,
68 percent wanted to move into jobs with more
responsibility in 1992, versus only 52 percent in
2002. Among college-educated women of Gen-Y,
Gen-X and boomer ages, the decrease was even
higher: 57 percent wanted to move into jobs with
more responsibility in 1992 versus 36 percent in
2002. (Generation Y is typically defined as those
born between 1980 and 1995, Generation X as
those born between 1965 and 1980.)
We then did a more focused look at leaders
in the global economy, Backon says. We took
the top 10 multinational companiessuch as
Plateauing: Redefining Success at Work
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Citicorp and IBMand conducted in-depth
interviews with the top 100 men and top 100
women. Of those leaders, 34 percent of the
women and 21 percent of the men said they
have reduced their career aspirations.
This plateauing is part of a bigger phenomenon
in the workforceone that also includes people
putting higher priorities on activities outside
their jobs, from family to volunteer work tohobbies. For example, in the FWI study, the
reason that the majority (67 percent) of these
leaders gave for their response was not
that they couldnt do the work, but that the
sacrifices they would have to make in their
personal lives were too great, says Backon.
We call it negative spillover from their jobs to
their homes, Backon adds. The whole issue
of overwork, of needing to multitask, of having
to deal with numerous interruptions during
their work day affects employee attitude,
not just toward their jobs but also their free
time. Based on our research, we know that
54 percent of employees are less than fully
satisfied with their jobs, 38 percent are likely to
actively look for new employment in the next
year, and 39 percent of employees feel they are
not engaged in the work they are doing. Most
employees do want to feel engaged by their
jobs. The term reduced aspirations does not
mean they are not talented or not good at what
they do. They are. But in focus groups, they also
say things like, I need to make these choices
because my family is a priority, or I need tomake these choices to make my life work.
One way to look at this phenomenon, adds
Wharton Management Professor Nancy
Rothbard, is that some employees still derive
some sense of identity from their jobs, but
they have, or are seeking, other ways to get
that fulfillment. They are no longer pushing
for the bigger raise, the larger staff, the more
prestigious title; they are taking energy that
had been focused primarily on goals defined by
the corporation and focusing it elsewhere.
Fewer Promotions, Fewer Pensions
Peter Cappelli, director of Whartons Center for
Human Resources, has done extensive research
into the changing nature of the workplace.
As he and others have noted, companies no
longer promise job security, generous benefits
packages, or even pensions; and employees no
longer feel loyal to their employers or obligated
to stay for long periods of time. Employees are
responsible for managing their own career track
and seeking out the mentors and training they
need to move on in their current company or,
just as likely, in a new company.
Cappelli agrees that organizations dont have
quite as much influence over people as they
used to in terms of shaping their goals andaspirations, in part because people come to
these jobs at an older age and change jobs
more frequently than in the past. Does that
necessarily mean people are on their own
career path? It depends what you mean by
that. Im not sure it means they are eschewing
corporate success. But they are looking outside
their current employers definition of success,
more so than in the past.
Cappelli cautions, however, that its unlikely
employees can go on cruise control and
still hope to be retained and valued by their
employers. It used to be you could just lie low
and wait for the pension. That doesnt happen
much any more. And while some employees
may not pay as much attention to the goals that
their companies want them to pursue, they
continue to work hard because they are afraid
of being laid off.... Companies systematically
go through and fire people who are not pulling
their weight. The ability to punish people into
appropriate behavior is one of the great and
unpleasant lessons of the 1980s. Employee
morale sank and productivity stayed up becausepeople were afraid of being fired, Cappelli
notes, adding, however, that this dynamic
changes in a tight labor market.
Wharton Management Professor Sara Kaplan
could imagine a scenario where people have
discovered that there is not too much point
being loyal to their employers, and then go on
to say, Okay, I have gotten where I am going to
get, and I am going to focus on the other part
of my life. I will keep working but wont invest
all my energy in my job.
But Kaplan also thinks everyone needs
something to be passionate about, so it would
be hard for me to imagine that people would
simply ramp down on their job without having a
crisis or without having found something else
to interest them. Indeed, in todays economy,
she adds, you cant keep your job unless you
are engaged, to a certain extent. Corporations
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dont want people who dont want to go higher.
They dont want people who wont strive. You
cant plateau; there are always people biting at
your heels.
Directly related to the issue of job satisfaction
is the question of job design. Management
scholars have been studying this for a long
time, says Wharton Management Professor
Sigal Barsade. Whenever a company designsa job, it must take into account how employees
view that job, whether their goal is to get ahead,
whether work is central to their lives, and so
forth. A company can make a real error trying
to redesign a job to be more enriched if the
employee doesnt want that, especially if the
new job definition requires them to work harder.
What is crucial, Barsade says, is good job fit.
Is the person doing what the company needs
done? If the answer is yes and the person
also is good at what they do but simply doesnt
want to do more, then that could actually be
a good situation, especially for jobs that dont
include room for promotion. This is applicable in
particular to customer service positions where
people need to be engaged while they are
providing the service but are not expected to be
thinking of ways to redesign the whole customer
service system. So the fit needs to be between
what the organization needs and what the
employee wants and values. If that fit isnt there,
thats when you are going to have a problem.
When should employees who have no interestin advancing or taking on higher challenges
worry about losing their job? I think as long
as these employees are working diligently
and competently and are willing to change
whether that means learning a new technology
or adapting to a new work processthey
should be safe, says Barsade.
Making Tradeoffs
Kathleen Christensen, who directs the program
Workplace, Work Force and Working Families
at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, suggests that
plateauing in ones job is a completely natural
part of a career, but we ignore it because
we have this notion of a steep trajectory.
Psychologists, she says, talk about different
stages of human development. One stage
may be that as people reach middle age, there
is the idea of generativitya willingness at
this point to start giving back, perhaps start
cultivating others rather than just focusing
on your own achievements. Plateauing can
be desirable, she says, in that employees
are likely to have a great deal of institutional
knowledge. They can be the ones who
know the processes, can share them, and
guide others. If everyone is always out for
themselves, it goes counter to developing the
team culture that every company wants.
No matter how people define their jobs,
Christensen adds, they still must have
performance goals and be evaluated in terms
of how well they meet those goals. But
we should also recognize that at different
points in peoples lives, they may define their
performance goals in slightly different ways
they may move at different temposand still
be well within what the company needs in
order to achieve its business goals.
Plateauing cuts across all boundaries,
Christensen suggests, and it could be the result
of certain events in peoples liveslike the birth
of a child or the need to care for a sick parent
which lead an employee to decide, Im going to
hold my own but not try to climb. But it would
be a mistake to assume that all the factors that
lead to different tempos are due only to outside
forces. It could just be an employees own
decision not to try to climb in the organization.
It doesnt mean they are slacking off. Someone
can be working hard and still be plateauing in a
career, Christensen says.
She emphasizes the need for employer and
employee to communicate expectations and
goals. Any decision to plateau, for whatever
length of time, should be a deal that is
structured to meet both sides needs. Its a
danger if employees think they can make these
decisions based only on what they want to do.
Its also a danger for the company if it doesnt
take into account what the employee needs in
order to do his or her best. It comes down to
principles of good management.
At Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, Senior Advisor
Anne Weisberg is involved with a pilot program
called Mass Career Customization, which allows
employer and employee together to customize
an individuals career along a defined set of
options. Its a realization, she says, that the
one-size-fits-all approach no longer works. In
the pilot program, which started in June with a
practice group of 400 people and will run for a
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year, we have unbundled the career into four
dimensions: role, pace, location and schedule,
and work load. Under the role dimension,
employees can specify, for example, whether
they want an external role involving significant
client interaction, an internal role without that
client service aspect, or a role somewhere
between the two. Under pace, the issue is how
quickly an employee wants to move up. Under
location and schedule, issues such as part-timehours, working at home, and willingness to travel
are included; while work load looks at variables
like the number of projects an employee is
willing to undertake at any one time.
There are tradeoffs to these choices,
Weisberg emphasizes. A totally internal role
has a different compensation structure and
advancement route. But the tradeoffs are
articulated, and an employee can move from
one set of options to another. Its a recognition
that people need to fit their work into their lifeand their life into their work over the course of
their career, which is 40 years. No one solution
will work for all that time. (Interestingly, she
notes, the pilot program so far has found that
rather than dialing down on their careers, most
of the practice group is choosing to dial up,
reflecting, in part, the fact that 65 percent of
Deloittes employees are under the age of 35.)
Companies cant redefine the corporate ladder
with a different model that is just as rigid,
Weisberg adds. We need to replace the
corporate ladder with a corporate lattice
a term implying a more adaptive kind of
framework that allows an individual to move
in many different directions, not just upward
or downward. I know in many companies,
employees are evaluated on the basis of how
much time they spend on the job or how
many sacrifices they make. That paradigm has
to shift so that you look at performance and
contribution separate from sacrifice.
Weisberg, senior advisor to Deloittes Womens
Initiative, says that when the initiative was
started in 1993, it was concerned primarily with
womens career paths, which are very different
from mens. (For example, the vast majority of
women, about 80 percent, do not work full-time
continuously throughout their career, whereas
the vast majority of men do, she notes.) But
we quickly realized these issues affect many
groups other than women, including men,
members of Gen-X and Gen-Y who perhaps
want to accelerate early and then decelerate
later, and the baby boomers who are trying
to adjust their workloads to accommodate
interests or responsibilities outside of work.
Whats been missing, she says, is a way
to approach all these different people with a
consistent set of options. On the micro level,
she adds, it is fundamentally a negotiation
between the employer and employee, which iswhy it is so important to develop the right kind
of negotiation framework.
In scanning the 2006 employment landscape,
Weisberg says she sees a heating up of the
war for talent. If you look at the demographics,
there is a huge shortage in many of the
knowledge-based industries. That is going to
be with us for a long time. She cites a recent
statistic that women now make up 58 percent
of college graduates, a trend that should affect
even more how jobs and careers are structured.
Smart employers dont want to drive their
employees so hard that they burn out. That is
very expensive. The estimates of the cost of
turnover keep going up, in large part because of
this issue of the shrinking skilled labor force.
In the past, she says, we used 150 percent
of salary as the cost of turnover. We are now
using 200 percent of salary. Some experts
say that for knowledge-based companies, that
figure is 500 percent. Turnover is a huge cost.
One of the major reasons for doing mass career
customization is to improve retention.
Weisberg, too, suggests the need for
transparency in any decisions related to the
work environment. When both employer and
employee are clear about the choices being
made, then both sides are more satisfied with
the arrangement. If choices are never discussed,
you can end up with mismatched expectations,
which can lead to stress on both sides.
Wharton Management Professor Stewart
Friedman, who teaches Wharton Executive
MBA students, among others, agrees that
What may be happening, suggest
McGrath and others, is that people are
setting career paths based on their
own values and denitions of success.
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people are struggling with this issue of, What
do I really care about and how do I measure
success? My sense is that more people, not
just middle-aged employees but younger people
as well, are raising this question in ways they
didnt 20 years ago. If so, is it because more
people are hitting the pyramid and accepting
the reality of lowered expectations caused by
less upward mobility, or is it that they are part
of a larger swing in our culture that is morefocused on other definitions of success besides
economics? I think it is probably both.
What makes leaders in an organization
effective, says Friedman, is that they realize
employees can have different values than your
typical workaholicsthose who enjoy working
80 hours a weekand still contribute to the
organization. But its hard to change norms
and cultural values that are deeply embedded.
What Friedman describes as the excesses
of the overworked generation have reacheda point where more and more people are
starting to question their total dedication to
work. We are seeing more people pursuing
creative alternatives. The big question 20 years
ago was, How early did your power breakfast
start? Now the big question is, Where and
how far did you go on your vacation?
Disappearing Flex Time
Its not clear how managers in organizations
might react to employees who redefine their
positions as jobs rather than as vocations or
callings. They could worry that people simply
decide to work to rule,i.e., do exactly what
is specified and nothing more, says Rothbard.
Companies are terrified of that happening:
They know things will break down at that point
because you cant specify everything that has
to be done in a particular job. But I think if
employees identities are still tied up in their
jobs, this wont happen.
Another consideration is how to continue
to motivate people if none of the traditional
rewards are availablesuch as a promotion
or a bigger office. A company may, in fact,
want employees to have other sources of
fulfillment, and so will try to build in things
that matter to them, says Rothbard. That could
include flex time, job sharing, job sabbaticals,
or the sponsorship of charity events that are
meaningful to employees.
Some people question the sincerity of programs
like flex time or sabbaticals that let people
pursue interests outside of work. I dont
think companies are paying a lot of attention
to peoples passions. There are programs to
address this but, frankly, it doesnt happen that
much, says Kaplan, who notes that companies
will try to institute flex-time benefits during
times of economic growth, but the minute the
crunch happens, then all those programs goaway. And even when companies implement
such procedures as flex time or job sharing,
adds Barsade, it doesnt really address the
bigger issues of the tremendous amount of
work people these days are expected to do on
the job.
One of those bigger issues relates to work/life
balance and job commitment. McGrath recently
taught an Executive Education course for
women in the middle management ranks of a
pharmaceuticals company to explore ways to
build relationships with, and support, each other,
as they attempted to take on the next level of
responsibility. Its because the companies were
finding that women were not willing to step
into the high-potential pool of employees for a
number of different reasons, including, in some
cases, wanting to make sure they had time for
their families. These women were at the vice
president level. They werent lacking in ambition
and they wanted to make a difference in their
jobs. It was just a question of, How much more
responsibility can I take on?
Rothbard continues to find it ironic that
employees who want to opt out of their
jobs for a short time get less pushback thanwomen who want flex time so that they
can pick up their children from school at 4:30
instead of 5:30 every day. Rothbard cites Arlie
Hochschilds book The Time Bind, which notes
the exceptions available to high-potential men
who want to take a sabbatical and travel around
the world. In one chapter, Hochschild relates
how two men had asked their supervisor for
Plateauing is part of a bigger
phenomenon in the workforce
people putting higher priorities on
activities outside their jobs, from
family to volunteer work to hobbies.
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time off to do underwater photography of
coral reefs. The supervisor granted them an
educational leave to pursue their project. Why,
the author asks, cant the company offer flexible
schedules to parents who want to pick up their
children early from daycare?
Rothbard also points to research on the
phenomenon of multiple roles, and the fact
that there are physical as well as psychologicalbenefits to people who have more than one
area in their lives that engages them and
requires their attention. An example would be
a woman who has responsibilities both at her
job and with her family at home. The research
discusses the buffer hypothesis, which says
that if something goes wrong in one area, you
then have another area that buffers you, says
Rothbard. In other words, work/family roles
enrich, rather than deplete, each other.
Stress in the workplace, many experts have
noted, can be intensified by technological
advancements that make it harder for people
to ever totally disconnect from their jobs
at appropriate moments, like vacations. As
McGrath notes, there are no boundaries
around employees time. They are always
available. McGrath has worked as a coach in
five large corporations over the past year and
at all of them, she observed workloads thatwere, in her opinion, unmanageable. Some
employees, she says, react by trying to set
strict limits on their accessibilityfor example,
not answering their Blackberry from 6 p.m. to
6 a.m. They have come to some sort of peace
with the fact that they will never get everything
done and keep everyone happy.
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BeWAre, LoneLy PLAnet PuBLicAtions tells
readers of its guide to France: This country
largely closes down for the month of August.
In Paris, particularly, shops are shuttered, and
even some museums operate for only limited
hours. Locals seem to migrateen masseto
vacation resorts along the Atlantic Coast and
the Riviera.
The French and, for that matter, people in
much of the rest of Western Europe, can
afford to check out for a month because they
receive an average of nearly two months a
year in paid leave, a combination of vacation
and government holidays, according to theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development. That distinguishes them from
citizens of the United States, who, despite a
similarly productive economy and a comparable
standard of living, enjoy about half as much
paid time off. The average American receives
approximately 4 weeks a year of paid leave,
while the average person in France gets 7 and
the average German, 8.
Sure, plenty of Americans will take a vacation
next month. If you have ever spent an hourin August sweltering in the lines at Disney
World or stuck in the traffic on New Yorks
Long Island Expressway, you know that. But
Europeans, with their generous allowances
of downtime, can afford to loll around for the
whole month, not just the 1 week thats typical
in the United States.
Work and vacation habits in the worlds most
economically advanced regions werent always
this way. As recently as the 1960s, Europeans
worked more than people in the U.S.,
according to a 2005 study by Bruce Sacerdote
of Dartmouth University and Alberto Alesina
and Ed Glaeser, both of Harvard University.
Since then, however, the regions appetites for
leisure have diverged, with Americans grinding
away for ever-more hours at the office, and
Europeans taking time to savor la dolce vita
(the sweet life). These days, the U.S. even
outworks famously industrious Japan.
Curse of the Blackberry
What changed? The explanations vary as
much as the potential locales for a summer
sojourn. Several experts at Wharton see a
role for culture and history. A Nobel laureate,
in contrast, says the difference boils down to
taxes. And Sacerdote, Alesina, and Glaeser
chalk it up to levels of unionization.
Cultural explanations enjoy the most currency
in the popular press. In the U.S., publications
like the Wall Street Journalbrag about the
productivity and work ethic of big-shouldered
America, while European commentators sniff
about what fun-hating grinds Americans have
become. These are obviously caricatures, but
they do appear to hold some truth, scholars at
Wharton say. Europeans seem to place a higher
value on leisure, while Americans tend to prefer
earning and spending. As a result, Americans
on average own bigger cars, bigger houses, andmore vacation homes, says Witold Rybczynski,
a Wharton real estate professor.
In contrast, Europeans self worth is often
tied up not with whether they drive a Lexus
or a Porsche but with their ability to enjoy a
hefty holiday, says Mauro Guillen, Wharton
management and sociology professor and a
native of Spain. It is a sign of social status in
Reluctant Vacationers: Why Americans WorkMore, Relax Less, Than Europeans
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Europe to take a long vacation away from home.
Money is not everything in Europe; status is not
only conferred by money. Having fun, or being
able to have fun, also is a sign of success and a
source of social esteem.
Likewise, Christian Schneider, manager of
the multinational research advisory group at
the Wharton Center for Human Resources,
points out that European managers often useall of their vacation time, even as their U.S.
counterparts brag about their workaholism.
Theres a tendency to really relax in Europe, to
disengage from work, says Schneider, a native
of Germany. When an American finally does
take those few days of vacation per year, they
are most likely to be in constant contact with
the office. Call it the curse of the Blackberry.
This cultural chasm can surprise Europeans
who come to work in the United States. Denise
Dahlhoff, a director for Wharton Executive
Education, remembers seeing her vacation
days cut nearly in half when she took a job in
the New Jersey office of ACNielsen, a market-
research company. The consultancy she had
worked for in Bonn, Germany, gave her 25
days a yearfive days more than the minimum
required by German lawwhile Nielsen initially
provided only 10. (The U.S. has no statutory
minimum.) She also learned that, unlike many
Germans, Americans typically check their
emails even when they leave the office for just
a couple of days. Its definitely socially more
acceptable to take vacation in Germany, shesays. Taking two or three weeks off without
being in touch is fine.
Cultural differences undoubtedly exist, but
for Ed Prescott, a Nobel Prize-winning
economist at Arizona State University, they
dont explain something as basic as work
habits. He instead credits taxes. In a 2003
study, Prescott points out that European
countries have much higher marginal tax rates
than the United States. As a result, he argues,
Europeans have much less incentive to workadditional hours. Why plug away for 45 hours,
instead of 37.5, when the government ends up
taking much of your extra income?
Peter Cappelli, a Wharton management
professor and director of the schools Center for
Human Resources, doesnt buy that argument.
Marginal tax rates dont really apply to salaried
workers, who are paid a set amount no matter
how long they work and are taxed accordingly.
And its these people, not hourly employees,
who have lately seen the biggest gains in hours
worked, he says.
In addition, many surveys have shown that
Americans are willing to accept less money for
more vacation, he notes. Even so, their hours
keep creeping higher. People here are working
more than they want to because thats cheaperfor employers than hi ring new employees, he
adds. In the U.S., there isnt much of a way for
employees to rebel against that. Unions only
represent a small proportion of people, and they
are mostly blue collar.
Unions Clout
Sacerdote, Alesina, and Glaesers analysis
mirrors Cappellis. They, too, conclude that
different levels of unionization explain why
Europeans work so much less than Americansthese days. Simply put, burlier European
unions bargained for more vacation. About 9
out of 10 workers in Germany and France are
covered by collective-bargaining agreements,
compared with only about 2 of 10 in the United
States, they point out. Because of their heft,
European unions have more muscle in politics
and board rooms. As a consequence, they
succeed at lobbying for policies that benefit
their members and employees in general.
In contrast, political decisions in the United
States tend to favor employers.
Yet that argument still seems to leave room
for a greater European liking for leisure; after
all, European unions could have fought for
higher pay, not more vacation. Sacerdote,
Alesina, and Glaeser say that expediency, not
a cultural predisposition for kicking back, drove
their decisions.
In the 1970s, Western Europes economy
endured a series of economic shocks, including
the oil crisis, they explain. In response,
employers insisted that they needed to lay off
workers. Unions, in turn, proposed retaining
workers but cutting everyones hours. The
outcome would be the samea reduction
in total hours and thus costsbut it would
achieve savings without layoffs. These work-
sharing arrangements were often promoted
with slogans like work less; work all , the
professors write.
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Work sharing may make little sense as a
national response to a negative economic
shock, they add. But at a single firm, a
membership-maximizing union may indeed find
work sharing to be an attractive policy.
Once work hours started falling for large
numbers of Europeans, a social multiplier
kicked in; more people wanted more vacation
because their family and friends were gettingit. People enjoy taking time off together, even
if it means inconveniencing themselves to do
so. We put ourselves through a lot of pain
to standardize on things like our weekends
and our vacations because there are big
complementarities, Sacerdote says. Even in
America, you can see the hassles that this
tendency causes: Home Depot wouldnt be so
jammed on Saturday mornings if most people
didnt have the same days off each week.
Regardless of whos right in the debate, these
differences in work habits may not endure.
Faced with slow-growing economies and socialunrest stemming from youth unemployment,
some European politicians have begun to
jawbone for change. And corporate managers
there have begun to squeeze more flexible
work rules out of unions, including longer hours
and fewer restrictions on firing, by threatening
to move plants abroad. Just this week, the Wall
Street Journaldocumented how, in response
to these sorts of changes, some German firms
have stepped up hiring at home. If this trend
continues, it might not only jumpstart Western
Europes economies but also begin to increaseaverage work hours and decrease paid holidays.
Sacerdote agrees that labor restrictions play a
role in Europes higher levels of unemployment.
Policies that make employment costlylike lots
of paid leave and restrictions on hiringcan
also make employers reluctant to hire. But he
also sees a bedrock issue that no amount of
negotiating will solve. Labor is so much less
mobile in Europe, he points out. So when
Ireland is booming, its not like people pour out
of France into Ireland. Even within Germany,
you have high unemployment in East Germany,
yet people dont move west. In the U.S., its
labor mobility that helps the labor market. But
people dont just pick up and move in Europe.
Undergirding the debate about vacation is theunstated premise that more is better. Besides
the occasional Scrooge-like boss, everybody
loves vacationor at least says they doand
attests to its usefulness as a way for workers
to recharge.
But count Nancy Rothbard, a Wharton
management professor, among the rare
skeptics. She cites research that has found
that the recharge effect lasts about 3 days.
And for many people, those 3 days come with
a hefty price of their ownand its not entirely
financial. Would more vacation be better forus? she asks. It depends on the tradeoffs.
If it means making less money, some people
might pass, preferring to save for their
childrens college educations, their retirements,
or even a house at the beacheven if they
rarely have the time to use it.
Studies also show that some people bank
weeks and weeks of vacation, she points out.
Analysts tend to assume that their bosses
discourage them from taking their time or that
they fear a rock pile of work when they return.But its possible that they just dont want to
leave work.
Consider parents, she says. Hauling kids on
long trips can be more stressful than staying
at home. If people can afford to bring along
grandparents or babysitters, then they can still
rest and relax. If they cant, working may beat
refereeing back-seat boxing matches in the
minivan. Whats more, vacations, especially
with gas prices at $3 a gallon and airfares
rising, arent cheap. It takes a lot of resources
to vacation with a family. Not everybody canafford to go to Paris.
Besides, if they go there in August, they might
find all the shops closed.
If [more vacation] means making
less money, some people might pass,
preferring to save for their childrens
college educations, their retirements,
or even a house at the beacheven if
they rarely have the time to use it.
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Women executives who leave the corporate
world when they hit a glass ceiling, want to
raise a family full-time, or decide to focus onother interests, encounter frustrating roadblocks
in their attempts to re-enter the workforce,
according to new Wharton research.
To overcome the obstacles, women should
confront the difficulties they face and prepare for
their return to the labor force the moment they
leave, says Monica McGrath, adjunct professor
of management at Wharton, executive coach,
and co-author of the study entitled Back in the
Game. Returning to Business After a Hiatus:
Experiences and Recommendations for Women,Employers, and Universities. I was seeing
many women who, when they reached 50 and
their kids were heading off to college, said, Now
let me get back to work, and they couldnt,
says McGrath. These are talented professional
women. Why was it so impossible?
The study found that while 36 percent of the
women who left their jobs said they were
conflicted about their decision, 70 percent
remained positive overall about the decision.
When they were asked to describe their hunt for
a job after deciding to return to work, 50 percentsaid they were frustrated, and 18 percent said
the experience was depressing. The women
were angry about having to justify the time
they took off and start over as if they had never
gotten an MBA, says McGrath, who is also the
former director of leadership development for the
Wharton MBA program.
McGrath conducted the research with two
Wharton alumnae, Marla Driscoll, a former
partner at Accenture, who has been an
independent consultant for 2 years, and MaryGross, head of learning and development
with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers. The
Wharton Center for Leadership and Change
Management and the Fort Foundation, a
nonprofit organization that develops women
business leaders, supported the study.
In late 2004 and early 2005, the researchers
surveyed 130 executives who had stepped out
of the workforce for at least 2 years and had
already returned, or were trying to do so. Of
those who responded, 83 percent were over
35, and 81 percent had an MBA. Sixty percent
had left their jobs within the last 5 years and 18
percent within the last 10 years. At the time of
the survey, 60 percent of the respondents had
re-entered the workforce, and 32 percent were
actively seeking employment.
Most of the respondents64 percenthad
planned to step out for 5 years or less, while48 percent had planned to stay out for 2 years
or less. In the end, 29 percent stayed out for
about the amount of time they had anticipated,
while 28 percent stayed out for a shorter
period, and 43 percent stayed out longer. A full
87 percent of those who initially never planned
to return to work were already back on the job
or looking for employment.
The women indicated that they wanted to find a
job for the intellectual challenge and stimulation
of being back in the workforce. They were also
returning out of economic necessity. Economic
times change. Childrens ages change. What
these women thought was going to be a lot of
money in their IRA is now not a lot, McGrath
says, citing comments that survey respondents
made in followup interviews. Those who are part
of the baby-boom generation seemed reluctant
to fully retire between ages 50 and 65, McGrath
noted. Thats a long time to play golf.
Women Who Step Out of the Corporate WorldFind It Hard To Step Back In
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The study showed that the participants entered
into their new job searches with realistic
expectations. Forty-nine percent anticipated
that the process would take at least a few
months, and 36 percent thought they might
have to take a lower-level position. Frustration
developed when they actually started the
interview process and had trouble even making
it past initial gatekeepers.
Keeping Up With the Competition
Survey respondents reported that one obstacle
to women re-entering the workforce is
corporate recruiters concern that experienced
MBAs are more expensive than a new graduate.
[Recruiters] are thinking, I can get a Wharton
MBA who graduated in 2005 who will hit the
ground running. Or I can get an MBA who
graduated [several years earlier], and I have to
get them back on track, and thats going to take
more time and money, says McGrath.
The best way to combat that problem is to
stay up-to-date on skills and to keep a hand in
the working world while absent from full-time
employment. For example, women need to
maintain professional licenses, take continuing
education courses, and keep their informal
network of business contacts alive if they hope
to have an easy transition back to work, survey
respondents said. Better yet, women who plan
to return full-time should seek out project work
or find short-term consulting jobs to remain
in closer touch with the business community.Being part of a project is a way to prove your
mettle, says McGrath. One woman surveyed
negotiated a deal with her boss to work on
projects, even though that type of agreement
was not official corporate policy. She took on
short-term projects for different parts of the
organization over 9 years. When she came
back full-time, she knew the company, and she
knew all the people.
Many of the executive women McGrath
coaches have a spouse who has decided to
step out of the workplace to manage the home.
Those men almost always continue some kind
of connection to their work life. When the
women talk about the role their husbands take,
they all talk about the business the husband
does on the side, says McGrath. The men
seem to stay more connected. Im not sure
women do that when they are home.
Keeping up with Excel is just one exampleof how women can improve their chances
of easing back into the workforce, suggests
McGrath. A large number of women who
responded to the survey had worked in the
financial industry and learned how to do a
spreadsheet in business school. Two years
later, the technology changes. Its totally
unacceptable to say, I dont know how to
do that. Another frustration for survey
respondents was being told they were
overqualified for jobs they were willing to take
just to get back into the workforce. One woman
said she was thinking about removing her MBA
from her resume.
McGrath advises women to be honest and
unapologetic about the time they stepped out
but to quickly return the focus to the present.
You can say, I felt I could make a bigger
impact with my parents who were sick, and
here is how Ive been keeping myself up-to-
date on skills. The best way for a woman to
make her case is to take a proactive stance,
not apologizing for taking time off for family
but framing her story in business terms andadopting a tone that exudes strength.
Four Sons and Teamwork
For example, one woman spent her years out
of the workforce raising four sons. This person
was very confident and said, Let me tell you
how managing a family with four sons is like
managing people at work, says McGrath.
She was able to cite a long list using business
language. McGrath gave another example:
Dont say, I helped raise $100,000 for mykids school. Say I was part of a team that put
together a fundraising program. There are ways
to frame it .
The survey results indicate women attempting
to go back to work set out with confidence.
Then, when confronted with obstacles, they
begin to suffer self-doubt, which only makes
their situation worse, says McGrath. When
When study participants were asked
to describe their hunt for a job after
deciding to return to work, 50 percent
said they were frustrated, and 18 percent
said the experience was depressing.
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they meet resistance, they are taken aback.
They are not prepared for it, and they lose
confidence. There is a difference between
interviewing from power and confidence and
interviewing in such a way that you feel a need
to explain yourself.
For many of those who responded to the
survey, the best route back to work was
through smaller companies. Of those whohad returned to full-time jobs, 59 percent
joined companies that were smaller than the
companies they worked for before they stepped
out. Only 20 percent were at larger companies,
and 21 percent had joined companies of roughly
the same size. The trend was stronger among
younger women: 63 percent of respondents up
to age 45 joined smaller companies, while 50
percent of respondents over 45 joined smaller
firms than the ones they had left.
The strong showing for small companies
also reflects respondents who are now self-
employed. Of those who had re-entered the
workforce, 45 percent are self-employed. Our
hypothesis is that the migration to smaller
companies and to their own businesses is a wayto have control over their hours and perhaps
a way to convince people that they have the
competency to do the job, says McGrath, adding
that many of the respondents used their time
out of the workforce to reflect on where they
wanted to go next in their careers. Of those who
had returned to the workforce, 61 percent had
changed industries, and 54 percent had changed
the kind of role they played on the job.
Employers who are interested in attracting
women returning to the workforce should
offer more flexible programs, says McGrath.
Companies should also train their recruiting
staffs to recognize the value that women
returning from a break in their careers can
bring and should develop mentoring initiatives
for womenwith structured programs similar
to the ones they have for relocating employees
or ex-patriots.
Finally, she says she would like to see an
annual best of list for companies that
welcome women who are returning to work.
Among those she cites are Deloitte & Touche,
IBM, Rohm and Haas, and Goldman Sachs. I
think companies are still trying to make sure
that they are women-friendly, says McGrath.
Maybe we will never know the real reasons
that women run into barriers, but I tend to be
optimistic. I think its just that no one at the
most senior level of the company has ever said
that finding women who want to reenter the
workplace and helping them become successful
is what he or she wants their workplace to be
known for.
Universities can also play a part in helping
smooth the way for MBAs and other
professional women to return to work. Schools
could offer targeted career services, alumni
networks, and executive education programs to
update skills for women trying to re-start their
careers. They should also ask students to think
more about the various paths their careers maytake once they have a few years of experience
in the working world. We need to encourage
women to think of their career as a lifetime,
says McGrath. They need to be asked, Whats
your game plan? Companies are diligent and
strategic in planning the path for a talented
persons career. As women, we need to do a
better job of that ourselves.
Whartons McGrath advises women tobe honest and unapologetic about the
time they stepped out but to quickly
return the focus to the present.
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Working too much, worrying about work
too much, neglecting family, neglecting self,
experiencing conflict, dissatisfaction, depression.These problems are all-too familiar in todays
overbooked, overworked world. Indeed, they
seem practically inevitable in a culture that
defines success as having it all.
Everyone struggles to balance work and family;
everyone has some firsthand knowledge of the
stress, frustration, and fatigue that arise when
personal and professional priorities conflict. We
are all familiar, too, with the massive commercial
response to this pattern. Seminars, self-help
books, software, support groups, periodicals,electronic planners, executive briefcases, and
even executive pens have been developed
to help people negotiate the competing,
increasingly complex demands of modern life.
This flood of knowledge, advice, and specialized
equipment speaks both to an acute need for
help and to the skillful exploitation of that
need by a business sector whose pressurized
atmosphere produced that need in the first place.
The demand for practical tips on living is so
great that people are willing to pay top dollar for
organizational and psychological assistance. (Thisreviewer happens to be devoted to her Seven
Habits Organizer, which sits open before her as
she writes. Item number one on the Prioritized
Daily Task List: Finish writing book review.)
As inspirational and even consoling as much of
this material is (my planner is bound in soft green
soothing suede; it contains an uplifting quote for
every day of the year), it tends to be a bit light
on actual information. We are rich in theories and
opinions about what is at stake for people working
in todays fast-paced and impersonal corporateenvironment, but we are comparatively poor in
hard data about what choices professionals as a
population actually make and how they experience
the results of those choices.
Stewart D. Friedman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus
address this problem in their new book Work
and FamilyAllies or Enemies? What Happens
When Business Professionals Confront Life
Choices. Forthcoming from Oxford University
Press this summer, Work and Familysets out
to study the lived experience of 860 business
professionals, as recorded in an extensive
questionnaire designed to elicit both the facts of
their life situations (how many hours a week they
work, how many hours they devote to childcare
each week, what sort of work they do, and so
on) and their feelings about those situations
(how satisfied they are with their careers, their
families, their personal growth, and so on).
The group surveyed consists of business
graduates from Wharton and Drexel, and
the substance of the book centers on an
elaborate interpretation of their responses. The
authors report their data in a logical way, their
explanations are clear, and they supplement
the whole with various charts and graphs for
easy statistical reference. The book is a solid
account of the difficult culture of modern
professionals, an account whose dual emphasis
on quantitative and qualitative factors allows
Work and Family: Is Peaceful Co-existence Possible?
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it both to confirm conventional wisdom and to
uncover surprising new information.
One confirmation: Motherhood remains a career
liability for women, while fatherhood is actually
a career asset. Women are still doing most of
the child care, while men with stable family
lives advance faster than single men. Some
new information: Families seem to be more
stable when mothers work long hours thanwhen fathers do. Conventional wisdom says
that kids are healthier and better adjusted if
their parents are involved in their lives. Friedman
and Greenhaus expose a far more complicated
reality. On the one hand, their numbers show,
the truism holds for fathers: When dad isnt
home much, and when he is distracted by work
while at home, kids act out more. On the other
hand, the truism does not hold true for mothers:
When mom is working overtime, it turns out,
kids actually do better. Their explanation: A
professionally happy mom has more to give her
family than moms who are ambivalent about their
decision to slow or even sacrifice their careers
after having children.
Another intriguing finding: Contrary to popularbelief, time is not the most important issue when
it comes to balancing work and family. Friedman
and Greenhaus show convincingly that the number
of hours worked has very little to do with whether
professionals are happy with their home lives.
Rather, what seems to determine satisfaction is
the degree to which people can focus. Being able
to switch gears effectively, so that work stays at
work and home life doesnt intrude at the office, is
far more important to a sense of overall well-being
than having more total free time.
Findings such as these prove the value of the
authors detailed, scientific approach. Amassing
data allows statistically significant patterns to
emerge, some of which confirm our intuitions
and some of which press us to rethink our
assumptions about what work and family are
and about what it takes to have it all. The
authors suggest, for example, that rather than
seeing work and family as competing for time
and attention, we might begin to see them as
mutually constitutive and beneficial; in other
words, we might be more effective at home and
at work if we could allow positive energy to flow
from one domain to the other. If we could do
that, the authors suggest, we could begin to build
a better future, one where corporations would be
more family-centered, where working mothers
would no longer be at a structural disadvantage,and where everyoneparents, children, and
businesseswould come out ahead.
Moving from statistical analysis to social
manifesto, Work and Familyaims to be an
inspiring blend of data and dream work, an
uplifting account of how we might re-imagine our
lives that gets its power from a solid grounding in
fact. The irony is that this goal might have been
better realized if the authors had borrowed some
of the catchy strategies found in the softer work
they aim to displace.
Simply put, as good as Work and Familyis,
it is also awfully dry. It reports findings with
care, but not with particular flair. And it makes
its recommendations for the future in such
bland and abstract terms that they are hard to
grasp. The authors write in their preface that
they hope the book will appeal to a general
audience as well as to specialists, and they are
right to want to make their findings available to
the lay reader. After all, that is who stands to
benefit most from the information and vision
Friedman and Greenhaus have to impart. But thestraightforward reporting of numbers and the
restrained interpretation of those numbers is not
likely to be enough to attract or keep the sort of
broad attention this work deserves.
Work and Familyavoids the sort of chatty,
prescriptive anecdotes that characterize best-
selling work such as Stephen R. Coveys First
Things Firstand The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People, and it does so for good reason,
because it is committed to building a case of
another kind. And yet, the sad reality is that it is
just this sort of personalized approach that would
have made the book thoroughly engaging and
accessible. In its desire to supply data where
others have supplied anecdotes, Work and Family
avoids exemplary anecdotes almost entirely. And
in so doing, it misses its chance to convert a dry
sociological study into a readable and therefore
usable piece of social criticism.
The number of hours worked has very
little to do with whether professionals
are happy with their home lives. Rather,
what seems to determine satisfaction is
the degree to which people can focus.
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When LAkshmi rAmArAjAn worked for
a nonprofit organization several years ago,
she noticed a high turnover rate among theemployees. It wasnt because of the work itself,
but because of the organizations management.
Employees were passionate about their jobs
but felt disrespected by their managers, says
Ramarajan. The employees were belittled
and patronized and often publicly chastised for
challenging the status-quo. Complaints about
the negative work environment were met with
inertia or rejected out of hand. Eventually, a lot
of employees left.
That experience led to a research paper co-authored by Ramarajan, now a doctoral student
in the Wharton Management Department, and
Wharton Management Professor Sigal Barsade
entitled What Makes the Job Tough? The
Influence of Organizational Respect on Burnout
in Human Services.
According to Barsade, One of the biggest
complaints employees have is they are not
sufficiently recognized by their organizations for
the work that they do. Respect is a component
of recognition. When employees dont feel that
the organization respects and values them, theytend to experience higher levels of burnout.
Or, as Ramarajan puts it, it is often not the job
that burns you out, but the organizat ion.
A Sense of Identification
While the researchers paper focuses on the
health care industryspecifically on certified
nursing assistants (CNAs) in a large, long-term
care facilitytheir findings apply to a broader
range of industries and individuals. Barsade,
for example, cites a project she did for the
real estate, accounting, and legal departments
of a large financial services agency. The
people in these departments were known as
nonproducers. That wasnt their formal title,
but it was what they were called because they
were not revenue generators. Not only did they
not have as much power as the people who
brought in the money, but thei r contributions
in terms of helping streamline and improve the
companys operations were not acknowledged.
This does not suggest a culture of respect,
Barsade says.
She also cites physicians allied with HMOs who
are often told how many patients they must
see each day, how long they can spend with
the patients, and what diagnostic questions
they must ask. Doctors cant offer customized
care under these circumstances. They feeldisrespected and are more prone to burnout
than doctors who work more autonomously,
she suggests.
A companys culturewhich, for the purposes
of the study, is defined as the unwritten
norms and values surrounding how employees
are valued as individualsplays an important
role in burnout, the researchers say. We
know that employees start identifying with
an organization as soon as they join it, says
Ramarajan. The more they feel respected as amember of the group, the more likely they are
to have that sense of identification. Respect
is a way in which employees get entrenched
into the workplace and feel that what they do
is meaningful. Conversely, if they observe that
people around them are disrespected, they
come to a consensus that the organization
doesnt treat people well.
More Than Job Demands or Personality, Lack ofOrganizational Respect Fuels Employee Burnout
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The researchers cite several ways in which
the perception of organizational respect or
disrespect can influence employee burnout.
For example, in situations where employees
perceive that the organization does not treat
employees with respect or dignity, burnout
can occur from employee demoralization.
Disrespected employees may need to mask
their true emotional reaction regarding how
their organization treats them while they assisttheir clients. This masking and suppressing
could increase emotional exhaustion, a major
component of burnout studied in the human
services industry.
Conversely, the researchers say, individuals
who feel respected by their organizations
are more likely to expend effort on behalf of
the organization and are thus less likely to
experience burnout.
Negative AffectivityBarsade and Ramarajan were especially
interested in health care because many of
the lower-level jobs in that industry tend to
be difficult and because a lot of research has
been done on the industrys burnout rate,
says Barsade. In the existing literature, there
are two factors that have predicted burnout
and why it occurs. The first factor is the job
itself. The second is the personality of the
employees and the presence of negative
affectivitysomeones propensity to be high
energy in their negative emotions, such as
anger, irritability, anxiety, or frustration. Its not
that people are always feeling that way but that
they are feeling that way more so than people
who have less negative affectivity. We focused
on those two factors.
Within health care, Barsade adds, the CNA job
was especially interesting because the work is
so hard. There are tough physical components
involved in helping patients, such as lifting
them, bathing and feeding them, cleaning up
after them, and so forth. And there are also
emotionally taxing components, such as when
the CNA gets attached to a patient who dies, or
when patients demand constant attention and
care. So what better place to see what impact
the organization has on the burnout levels of
its employees and what they can do about it?
In addition, she says, burnout can affect the
quality of patient care.
One approach an organization can take to try
and decrease burnout and reduce turnover is
to hire people who arent going to be stressed
out by the job. That, of course, is not only
difficult to predict with complete accuracy but
is often not feasible given the labor market
supply. Organizations can also tr y to change
the job to make it less demanding; but, at least
in the case of CNA positions, the ability to do
that is limited because of the nature of the job.A third approachone not addressed by the
existing research on burnoutis to consider
the organizational culture of the company, says
Barsade. Can the values of the company
including whether you treat employees with
respect or with disrespectinfluence how
people do their work and whether or not they
will feel burned out? Although burnout can
lead to higher turnover costs in any industry,
health care is especially interesting because
the nature of its work is more likely to result in
burnout. As our countr y ages, this will becomea bigger and bigger issue, Barsade says.
In conducting their studywhich looked at
CNAs from 13 units across three sites of along-term care facility during two different
time periods, 2003 and 2005the researchers
measured several aspects of participants jobs.
Under the heading organizational respect,
for example, participants were asked to rank
how characteristic, or how uncharacteristic,
the following five statements were of their
organization: Staff members respect each
other; Staff members are treated with
dignity; Cultural diversity of the staff is
valued; Supervisors pay attention to staff
members ideas, and Staff members areencouraged to be creative when solving
problems. These were the character istics
that a committee of senior managers and
employees thought best illustrated how
organizational respect would be demonstrated
in their organization.
Under the heading of autonomy, participants
were asked to respond to the following
A companys culturethe unwritten
norms and values surrounding how
employees are valued as individuals
plays an important role in burnout,
the researchers say.
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statements: In general, how much say or
influence do you feel you have in what goes
on in your unit? Do you feel that you can
influence decision making...regarding things
about which you are concerned? Does your
supervisor ask your opinion when a problem
comes up which involves your work?
Under the heading trait negative affectivity,
employees rated their general tendency tofeel irritable, upset, nervous, afraid, and guilty.
Burnout was measured by participants
reactions to four statements: I feel
emotionally drained from my work; I feel
used up at the end of the workday; I feel
fatigued when I get up in the morning and have
to face another day on the job, and I feel
burned out from my work.
Among the Studys Findings
Organizational respect influences burnout
above and beyond the effects of job demands
and negative affectivity. Because existing
studies conceptualize burnout as stemming
from the job or the individual, rather than the
organization, the problem from a managerial
perspective is the person, the authors note.
Succumbing to burnout becomes a private
affair of the employee and not something of
concern to the organization as a whole... This
ignores the contextual sources of the problem.
Furthermore, the researchers say, by
conceptualizing job demands as a primary causeof emotional exhaustion, the nature of the work
is seen as the culprit, rather than the multiple
sources of an employees work experience.
Human services jobssuch as caring for
elderly sick patients or working with mentally
ill individualsmay be difficult, the researchers
add, but the presumption that the demands
are due to client interaction means that very
little can be done about changing the negative
parts of the experience. In fact, the researchers
suggest, companies can take a number of steps
to change the organizational culture.
The impact of organizational respect
on burnout is felt most strongly when job
autonomy is low. This finding confirms the
researchers hypothesis going into the study
about the importance of autonomy, which
they define as the discretion that one has
to determine the processes and schedules
involved in completing a task. Autonomy,
the researchers note, can act as a buffer on
stressand actually decrease job burnoutif
autonomy is high, but not if it is low.
The respect with which an organization treats
its employees is a pervasive organizational-level
phenomenon that employees can recognize and
agree upon, the researchers note.
In addition, respect can be a powerful signal
to individuals regarding their standing not only
as employees but as people... As information
comes from a variety of sources, ones
perceptions of respect and disrespect are
not only based on how one views ones own
treatment but also by how others are treated.
For example, when team members see someone
else on the team being treated unfairly, they
alter their own perceptions of the fairness of
the team. Likewise, the extent to which others,
not just the self, are treated...can influence an
individuals own perceptions of respect.
Ramarajan and Barsade carry this point further:
Given the increasing importance of health careproviders in aging societies, one aspect of
burnout is especially crucialthe phenomenon
of human services workers mentally turning
over but remaining physically present. In our
study, we found that being a longer-tenured
employee was significantly correlated with
higher burnout. From a managerial perspective,
withdrawal behaviors are perhaps more
important to human services organizations
than turnover because withdrawal may be the
response taken by employees who do not have
high-quality job alternatives, they write.
In the worst-case scenario, the researchers
add, disrespectful organizations can be left
with neglected and neglectful individuals who
have figured out how to cope or survive by
mentally turning over, while those with better
job alternativesor more commitment to their
professions rather than the organizationend
up leaving.
By conceptualizing job demandsas a primary cause of emotional
exhaustion, the nature of the work
is seen as the culprit, rather than the
multiple sources of an employees
work experience.
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Putting Work in a Broader Context
The authors research has a number of
implications for managers. While it is likely, the
authors note, that disrespect is experienced
across industries, disrespect for individuals
may be particularly problematic in the helping
professions where concern for individuals is
supposedly paramount. Because it is not just
the demands of the job, or the personality ofthe employee, that drive burnout in human
services jobs, but is also the organizational
environment, then there is a point of entry
for human resource management. Good
versus poor management, in the form of
organizational respect, may therefore have a
clear and critical role in stemming burnout in
human service organizations.
For example, Barsade suggests that HR
departments make it clear they respect and
value the work employees do and recognize the
difficulty of that work. Employees understand
that internally their work is very significant to
how well the organization achieves its goals.
Companies like Mary Kay, Inc., are based on
the idea of rewarding people to success, she
says. Mary Kay rewards for everything. It uses
respect as a powerful motivator for its sales
force of independent contractors.
Employers can also highlight to their employees
how important their work is to society as a
whole, Barsade adds. Very often, caretaking
work is not all that valued, but if employees in
a daycare center, for example, understand that
they are involved in early childhood education,
this puts their work in a broader context. In
addition, she suggests that for people in jobs
that dont pay very well (and wont in the future),
managers can at least compliment employees,
hold awards dinners, and so forth, just so long
as these shows of respect are authentic.
This doesnt mean that managers cant look
at employees performance or cant disagree
with suggestions and demands that employees
might put for ward, Ramarajan adds. It just
means that everything is done with an attitude
of respect. This approach wont just make
employees feel better. It will help them stay
with the organization and do a better job. So its
not just about keeping your employees happy
but actually doing the job the organization
exists to do.
Does Ramarajan think employees would besurprised to learn that job burnout is not always
their fault, but can also reflect the way
the organization treats them? I dont think
employees would be surprised, but I do think
managers and/or corporate executives might be.
And I think employees would be surprised to
find out how widely shared this experience is.